In recent years, advances in technology have led to substantial changes in the design of automobiles. Many of these changes involve the complexity and magnitude of power usage of various electrical systems within automobiles, and particularly those of hybrid and electric vehicles. These vehicles are typically designed to draw a significant amount of their power output from rechargeable batteries. To better accommodate consumers, manufacturers of such vehicles have made the process of recharging batteries easier and more convenient by designing recharging systems to be compatible with common 110/120V home/garage outlets. A driver may “refuel” a vehicle during periods of non-use such as overnight by simply plugging a recharger's specially constructed power cable into such an outlet. The system maintains the recharging rate at safe levels throughout the process, and automatically turns the power off when a full charge level is achieved.
Automotive power cables for home-based vehicular recharging are designed to handle relatively high current loads for extended periods of time. To provide added protection, manufacturers often include built-in safety features that generally comprise a circuit breaking device such as a ground fault circuit interrupter, or GFCI, located at or near the cable's plug. A GFCI prevents current leakage by automatically opening the circuit whenever a sufficient disparity between outgoing and returning current levels is detected. However, the plug end of a recharging power cable may still become loose fitting and/or bent over time, possibly degrading outlet-to-plug electrical contact and contributing to overheating. Further, recharging is often performed without supervision over a period of several hours and an overheated plug may not cause a current leakage and thus may go undetected by a GFCI.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide a system for detecting the temperature of the plug on a vehicular battery recharging cable during a recharging cycle. Further, it is also desirable to halt the flow of current in the recharging cable when the plug temperature reaches a specified threshold level. Furthermore, other desirable features and characteristics of the present invention will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and the foregoing technical field and background.